Sunday, January 14, 2018
Mount and Camera Problems in the Field
I've been trying to finish my Pleiades shots that I started last winter. The plan has been to combine a bunch of 10 min exposures and 3 min exposures shot through the 80mm f/6 refractor. A few nights ago, I started getting disconnect messages from the camera AND the mount. While trying to troubleshoot, I even got a Blue Screen error. When the camera disconnected, I was able to reconnect by powering it off/on. When the mount disconnected, I couldn't get the USB to Serial adapter to reconnect unless I restarted the computer.
It got to a point where even restarting wouldn't reconnect the darn USB to Serial adapter. Almost like clockwork, I would get the message in the pic above during the initialization of PHD2 or after I started an imaging run in BackyardEOS. I began to wonder if the adapter had gone bad. But disconnecting and reconnecting sometimes fixed it. Not always.
The first night these issues popped up, it was around midnight. So, I assumed it was temperature related. But I didn't know where in the chain the issue was happening. Was it in the USB hub? Was it a cable? Was it a loose connection? Was it the USB port in the laptop?
On that first night, during my troubleshooting, I noticed the USB plug into my laptop was cock-eyed and barely making a connection. I plugged it back in, restarted the computer, and everything seemed fine. But I was only able to use the rig for maybe 20 minutes before the moon came up.
I'm using a Star Tech USB hub. Though the hub has a power connector, I've never felt the need to use it. I've connected the Canon camera, the QHY autoguider, and the USB to Serial adapter for over 20+ sessions without any noteworthy issues.
So I took one of my small 12 volt 7 amp batteries and made a power supply for the hub. I had a chance to use it a couple nights ago while doing a make-up session for a student at the Basis Astrophotography Workshop. It didn't make a difference. While trying to start an actual imaging session, the USB adapter started throwing up error messages AGAIN. Luckily, after several restarts, I was able to coax the adapter back to life. But we wasted more than half the session troubleshooting.
I decided I needed to make a few changes. I remembered that I recently updated the AP V2 driver about a week ago. Also, I switched to a different AC inverter for the deep-cycle battery. So, I uninstalled the latest AP driver and reinstalled an older one (5.09.07). I also went back to my old noisy AC inverter. AND I tried a newer, shorter cable for the serial connection between the mount and USB adapter. So, last night, under really good skies, it all worked fine!!!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
But now which is it? Bad driver, bad inverter or bad cable?
ReplyDelete